Why you shouldn’t build your entire website in Flash
The point of this article in 140 characters or less:
If your website relies heavily on Flash, you’re making a dangerous mistake and missing precious opportunities to connect with your clients.
Last month Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to Adobe slamming their Flash technology and announcing that it would not be supported on any iThing going forward.
This should prove to be the first nail in the coffin of Flash as a serious web application. Though some websites may continue to rely on it, they do so at their own peril.
However, many small businesses have used Flash for their websites for various reasons. It can be quick to deploy, it easily integrates video and slide shows that would require a developer’s crafty handy work without Flash, and many people think it looks pretty.
Those biz owners need to know why they should avoid heavy reliance on Flash. If more than 10% of your website relies on Flash, and especially if any navigational elements are using it, read on to find out why you need to scrap Flash now.
- Websites built using Flash are rarely – if ever – optimized correctly for search engines.
Most Flash websites are launched by non-developers who purchase a template, fill in their content and logo, and launch it. They aren’t aware that all the content in a Flash site is wrapped inside a “movie” and isn’t crawled or indexed by search engines very well, if at all. Google likes words, pictures, and tags attached to media like videos and music. Flash alone is just a movie that runs inside a player in the web browser. The text is not “searchable”. A developer can code your Flash site so there’s alternate text that Google can nibble on, but it’s still not as good as having a site built in HTML and standard tools. - Most Flash sites are difficult to navigate.
Check out just a couple websites I stumbled across that are built in Flash: Bad site #1, Bad site #2 … How easy was it to locate the core message of those websites? Was it simple to find the contact button or the services pages? Did you know what the navigational cues were? Of course not. Most Flash sites are examples of graphic designers showing off their skills, while ignoring the fundamental rules of web “wayfinding”. To cite one specific example of why Flash sites are terrible: the “Back” button doesn’t work on Flash websites. Ask yourself, “If I knew nothing about my business, and I went to my website, would I be able to find out what we did within 20 seconds? If the answer is no, your site is bad. Fact is, most web visitors won’t give you that long, they’ll leave your site forever. - Flash doesn’t run on the i-Things.
In 2009, depending on who you believe, 3-7% of all web traffic came from mobile devices. Early in 2010, WIRED MAGAZINE reported that 10.7% of the traffic on several major websites was coming from mobile devices, including Apple’s new iPad. The iPhone accounts for 50% of all smartphone internet traffic. Your customers are increasingly using handheld, mobile devices to access the web. Your website should be ready for that. Adobe has been notoriously slow at making Flash compatible with mobile platforms and devices. Apple doesn’t allow Flash on their i-Things. That means that if your website is running on Flash, half of the smartphone internet users cannot see your website. If they type in your web address on their iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad, your site will break. They won’t be able to contact you or find directions to your store.
To conclude: if you have a website that relies on Flash you should rethink that strategy immediately. Oh yes, and don’t have music running on your website – it just bugs people. Really.
